The Red Mustang

"Take it, Brady," said the voice of Captain Moore. "Bring him in. He's a messenger of some kind."

The cavalryman took it, but it was nothing more than a leathery cactus leaf, as wide as a stretched-out hand.

"How," said the Indian. "Kah-go-mish."

"That's it," exclaimed Sam Herrick. "I reckoned we'd hear from him. Colorado!"

The leaf was passed to Captain Moore, and the Apache brave followed him, but only as far as the end of that pathway. There he stood, and seemed almost like a wooden Indian. He saw both Ping and Tah-nu-nu, and they saw him, but if they knew him they did not say so.

"They thought nobody saw 'em, but they were making signs," said Sam; and the old Chiricahua muttered, "Ugh! Good!" as if he had understood something.

Just at that moment Captain Moore met Colonel Evans.

"Read that," he said, as he held out the cactus leaf.

There were letters deeply scratched into the smooth, fleshy surface.

Father I'm a Prisoner to Kah-Go-Mish Staked out last night Safe now Don't know where he means to go next He says you will hear some day

Cal

Send mother my love.

It was a wonderful cactus leaf, for it made the strong hand of Colonel Abe Evans shake so that he could hardly hold it. Every pair of eyes around Cold Spring stared at it and at him, and when they once more turned to look at the Apache brave who had brought it he was not to be seen. He had vanished as if he had been a dream.

Chapter XXVI.

CAL'S VISITORS AND HIS BREAKFAST

Even when he was lost in the chaparral, and saw the sun go down without any hope of escaping from the spider-web of buffalo-paths, Cal had not felt quite so badly as he did when he found himself staked out. There he lay upon his back under the vast canopy of an ancient cypress-tree. Near him the two uncouth-looking Apaches had thrown themselves upon the grass. They seemed to be asleep pretty soon, for there was no more need of their watching the prisoner.

Get away?

He could move his hands and feet just enough to keep the blood in circulation, and that was all. He could turn his head and look at the glow of the camp-fires and at the forms of men that now and then went stalking to and fro. They were only dog-soldier Indian police in charge of the camp, for the remainder of the band was taking all the sleep it could get. Even the dogs were entirely quiet. If he looked up, there was nothing but a dense mass of foliage, but it began at a height of fifty feet or more from the ground. Great branches reached out, and from these hung long ropes of vines of some sort, here and there, to the very ground. There was no opening through which a star could be seen, and it seemed to Cal as if his last hope had departed.

The position of a staked-out man is peculiarly uncomfortable, but it is the traditional method of the red men for securing captives. The Hurons and Shawnees and Iroquois, and other eastern tribes, made a forest-jail in precisely the same way before any white men ever came among them. Cal found that it was a great affliction not to be able to turn over in bed, but that was nothing to the torment of having a mosquito on his chin, another on his nose, and ten more humming around his head on all sides, with no hand loose to slap among them. He almost ceased thinking of Indian cruelties while suffering the merciless torments of those insects. Tired as he was, he felt no longer any inclination to sleep. His eyes grew accustomed to the dimness about him and over him. As he looked up into the branches of the tree, after a while, he heard a strange, mournful cry, very much like something that he had listened to before, and then something whitish and wide-winged came sweeping down from the darkness, and his eyes followed it as it swiftly shot across the camp.

"Owl, I guess," groaned Cal. "Never saw one so large before. White owl. What a hoot he had! Oh, my nose! These are the biggest kind of mosquitoes."

So they were, and they kept their victim in continual misery. It was not long before he saw something else, not so large as the owl, fly very silently past him. It went and came several times, with a peculiarly rapid flight, and he had pretty fair glimpses of it.

"What an enormous bat!" exclaimed Cal. "They have almost everything down here. What I'm most afraid of are scorpions and centipedes and tarantulas. Such woods as these must have lots of 'em, and I couldn't get away."

They were dreadful things to think of, but Cal had not remembered all of the customary inhabitants of a Mexican forest. He was put in mind of yet one more after a while. He heard a rustling sound among the grass and leaves near him, and it made him lift his head as high as he could. Just then something else lifted its head, and Cal saw a pair of small, glittering, greenish eyes that travelled right along at a few inches above the ground. The cold sweat broke out all over him, but he held perfectly still.

"They don't bite if you don't stir or provoke them," was the thought in his mind; but that snake was not of the biting, venomous kind. It was only a constrictor, not more than seven or eight feet long, and only three inches thick at his thickest point. He was in no hurry, and it seemed to Cal as if it took him about half an hour, or half a century, he could not tell which, to crawl across the pair of legs which the Apaches had pinned down. It was really about a quarter of a minute.

Cal had no idea how hard he had been straining at his fetters, spurred by the mosquitoes. He made an unintentional jerk with his right arm as the snake disappeared, and was startled by a discovery.

"Loose?" he said to himself. "Then I can loosen it more. I won't disturb either of those fellows, but I must scratch these mosquito-bites."

A pull, another pull, and that forked stick began to come up, for one of its legs had been put down in a gopher's hole, and had no holding. Out it came, slowly, softly, and Cal's right hand was free to reach over and help his left. That stake was hard pulling, but it came up at last, and then the ankles could be set free.

"I'll drive them all down again hard," said Cal to himself, and he did so.

"Let them wonder how I got out," he added; "but there isn't any use in my trying to run away. They'd only catch me and kill me at once."

He rose to his feet, and it occurred to him that his safest place might be by one of the smouldering camp-fires. The short June night was nearly over, and the dawn was in the tree-tops when Cal walked away from the shadow of the great cypress. He had a sort of desperate feeling, and it made him singularly cool and steady. He did not meet anybody on his way. His first discovery, as he drew near the fire, was that the Apaches had found plentiful supplies in the packs of the Mexican mules. They knew how to make coffee, too, for there was a big tin coffee-pot nearly full. Cal put it upon some coals to heat, and then he saw a tin cup lying on the ground, a box of sugar, a piece of bacon, and a fragment of coarse corn-cake.

"That'll do," he said to himself. "I may as well eat."

The coffee boiled quickly, and Cal sat with a cup of it in one hand, while with the other he held a stick with a slice of bacon at the fire end of it. He did not know what was happening under the cypress.

One wrinkle-faced brave opened his beady black eyes and looked at the place where the staked-out captive had been. The mocking smile he had begun flitted away from his lips.

"Ugh!" he exclaimed as he sprang up and kicked his comrade, and in an instant more two dreadfully puzzled Apaches were examining the forked stakes which ought to have had a white boy's wrists and ankles in them. Hard driven into the ground were all four, but the white boy? Where was he?

"Heap bad medicine!" exclaimed one brave, almost despairingly.

"Boy heap gone," said the other.

They looked in all directions, but the last refuge they dreamed of was the camp-fire where Cal was sitting.

Chapter XXVII.

THE POST-BOY THAT GOT AWAY

Colonel Romero and most of his command spent the greater part of the day after Cal's capture in waiting for the pack-mule train. Some went out after game and did very well, and others went to hunt for signs of the Apaches of Kah-go-mish and did not do well at all. The rest, officers, cavalry, and rancheros, did nothing, and they all seemed to know how.

Right away after breakfast, and before the search for Cal began, the dozen rancheros who no longer had any pack-mules to lead left Cold Spring behind them. Out they marched, under careful directions, for the way given them by Sam Herrick and the Chiricahuas. They certainly marched well, but it was in dejected, disgusted silence. Kah-go-mish, and, after him and his Apaches, Colonel Romero and his horsemen, had trampled the old trail into a very new and plain one, easy to follow. It was well for the peace of mind of the train-guard without any train that it was so, for to be lost was for them to be starved, since they had not so much as a bow and arrows to kill a jackass rabbit. Not one of them now wore a hat, as the braves of Kah-go-mish had imitated their chief, so far as a dozen Mexican sombreros went. There was no danger, however, that the rancheros would get themselves tanned any darker. They pushed on steadily across the desert, and at about the time when the dispirited Americans who searched for Cal in the bushes gave it up and returned to Cold Spring there was a great shout in the camp of Colonel Romero. All the waiting for pack-mules and supplies was over, but the muleteers had arrived, disarmed, hatless, and on foot.

The colonel and every other soul in the camp said as much as they knew how to say concerning the cunning, daring, impudence, and wickedness of all Apaches, and particularly of Kah-go-mish.

The message of the chief to the colonel was pretty fully given, leaving out some of the animals, birds, and insects he had put into it, and a council of war was called to consider the matter.

The council was unanimous. Without the supplies that had been lost it was out of the question to chase Apaches. Without a good guess as to precisely where Kah-go-mish had gone, they knew that he was away beyond the desert somewhere, either in Mexico or the United States, and they might as well give him up. It was therefore decided that all possible hunting and fishing should be done at once, and that the entire command must find its way to the nearest Mexican settlements as fast as it could go.

So far as Colonel Romero's Mexicans were concerned Kah-go-mish already felt pretty safe, but he was by no means sure what other forces of the same nation might or might not be out in search of him.

As for the blue-coats and cowboys, the chief knew something about a boundary line. There was one around the Mescalero Reservation, and he had broken it, but he was sure that pale-faces never did such "bad medicine." He was safe from the Americans until he should see fit to re-enter the United States. That is, however, that he was proud to feel and say that so great a chief as himself could not long be entirely safe anywhere. Too many army-men wanted to see him.

In the camp at Cold Spring, Colonel Evans and all his friends felt that they would give a great deal to know the exact circumstances under which Cal had written his cactus-leaf letter. It passed from hand to hand, for every man to take a look at it. The cavalry company was short of officers, not having brought along even one lieutenant. The orderly sergeant, therefore, was the man next in rank to the captain, but there was another sergeant and two corporals, and they each had much more to say than could rightly have been said by mere private soldiers.

All agreed that it was a remarkable letter; all were glad to hear that Cal was safe, and all were glad that there was to be no more need of bushwhacking and bugle-work in the hot chaparral.

The cowboys had opinions of their own, and most of them looked a little blue.

"Staked out!" exclaimed Sam Herrick. "Colorado! To think of Cal Evans staked out!"

"Wall, now, they let him up again," said Bill. "Looks as if they didn't allow to torter him, leastwise not right away. What a lot of wooden-heads we were, though, to let that there 'Pache that brought the leaf slip out of reach the way he did."

"The cavalry had him," said Sam. "I took my eyes off him just a second, and when I looked again he wasn't thar."

The cactus leaf came back to Colonel Evans, and once more he studied every dent and scratch upon it. The writing looked as if it had been done with the point of a knife. There could be no doubt but what it was Cal's work.

"You'll see him again," said Captain Moore, encouragingly.

"It'll be about the time that Kah-go-mish sees his own children, I reckon," replied the colonel. "They're a sort of security, but something might happen to him in spite of their being here."

"Indians are uncertain; that's a fact," said the captain, "but you must keep up your spirits. Do you believe in Providence, colonel? I do."

"Do I?" said Cal's father. "Of course I do. Why?"

"Well, isn't it curious that Cal hasn't been hurt, through all this, up to the time when he wrote that letter? Wasn't he taken care of?" asked the captain.

"He got lost in the chaparral, didn't he? Isn't he a prisoner now?"

"They found him, and it may be a good thing that they did. Hold on a bit. Anyhow we'll keep a tight grip on those two young redskins."

"Ping," said the colonel. "That's a queer name for an Indian boy. Tah-nu-nu isn't so bad for a young squaw. We'll camp here to-night?"

"Of course," said the captain, "but we'll make an early start in the morning, and go back close along the boundary line. There's good grass beyond the desert; wouldn't mind forgetting the line for a few miles if we came near enough to any Apaches. Sorry I didn't get another talk with the chief's messenger. It beats me how he slipped away."

The wild-looking-Mescalero postman who brought the cactus-leaf letter may have had another errand on his hands. When he halted at the head of the path, in full view of everybody, he did not look as if he meant to go away without an answer, and he did not. He obtained one from Ping and Tah-nu-nu, to carry to their father and mother. The Chiricahuas saw it given, and afterwards reported that the signs exchanged told that all were well, and that the young folk would soon be at liberty. Some other messages came and went, through hands and feet and features, and then the postman sank down into a sitting posture at the edge of the chaparral. That was where Captain Moore now remembered seeing the last of him.

The excitement over the cactus leaf absorbed all minds for a minute or so, then, and the Apache warrior went under a bush as if he had been a sage-hen. Once beyond it he was hidden, but he went snake-fashion some distance farther. As soon as he deemed it safe to stand erect he did so.

"Ugh!" he remarked. "Pa-de-to-pah-kah-tse-caugh-to-kah-no-tan heap great brave. Heap get away."

That was evidently his longest name, and he was a pretty tall Indian, and had a right to compliment himself just then. The men who hurried out after him, when they found that he was gone, went back again with a mental assurance that he was somewhere in the chaparral, but that only he himself knew precisely where. While they were hunting, he was walking rapidly through the cross-paths of the spider-web. He came to a place where one of the horses won by his band near Slater's Branch was tied to a bush. He was saddled and bridled, and he carried also one of the small water-barrels found among the equipments of the Mexican pack-mules. The warrior picked up his weapons from the sand near the horse, drank some water, complimented himself again, and went off on foot to complete his day's business. He drew stealthily nearer and nearer to the cavalry and cowboy camp at Cold Spring, and now, while Captain Moore and Colonel Evans were expressing so much regret that the postman of Kah-go-mish was beyond their reach, a pair of eyes under a thorn-bush, within a hundred yards, watched their every movement and took note of whatever was going on around the spring.

The lurking Apache could see much, but he could hear little. Least of all could even his quick ears catch the suppressed whisper of Colonel Evans when at last he lay down upon his blanket for a few hours of rest.

"Cal," he said, "if I don't take you home with me, what shall I say to your mother?"

Chapter XXVIII.

THE MYSTERY OF THE STICKS

Cal Evans, sitting by the fire and toasting his bacon in the camp of the Apaches, knew nothing of what was to happen that day in all those other places. He was ignorant of what had already occurred, except to himself. His strongest feeling, at that moment, was grief for what he knew must be the anxiety of his father, and for what he feared that his mother would suffer when his father should get home without him. He had passed a wonderful night, and it seemed to have made an older boy of him.

The dawn was brightening fast when he took his first cup of coffee. He was very hungry, and he picked up a piece of corn bread to eat with it. The fact that it was stale, and that it had been upon the ground, did not make any difference to a fellow who had been staked out, and who was very likely to be upon his back again very soon, or tied to a torture-post.

As for his two guards, he did not know nor care that they had aroused several other braves, and that all of them were rummaging the forest, near the cypress, in search of any trail he might have left behind him. Each brave in turn had re-examined the forked stakes and had expressed his wonder. According to them, Cal was "Heap snake" and "Heap bad medicine." They were at work upon their mystery, and he upon a piece of toasted bacon, when he heard an almost musical "Ugh," behind him, followed by other grunts, in which there was no music whatever.

The first sound came from a woman's voice, and, when he turned around, there stood Wah-wah-o-be. She had risen early in order that the chief's breakfast might be ready for him upon his return from his morning look at the corral. The other exclamations were uttered by three dog-soldiers, whose patrol duty had brought them to that camp-fire.

"How," said Cal, holding out his hand. "Good squaw. Give boy water."

Then he remembered that she had answered him very well in Spanish, and he said something in that tongue about the coffee and bacon, and told the three dog-soldiers that they were very fine-looking fellows.

It was not impudence, and it was not cunning, for it was nothing more nor less than desperation, but he could not have acted more wisely. While he was exchanging morning greetings with the dusky policemen, yet another brave came hurriedly up, and, the moment he saw Cal, he uttered an astonished whoop. He was one of the pair set to watch him, and he had come in great trepidation to announce the escape of the prisoner. Under other circumstances he might have even used violence, but a captive was safe in the hands of the dog-soldiers, and he did but stare in Cal's face as if in doubt as to his being there.

Cal's mocking coolness was not at all exhausted, for he felt too badly to be afraid. He held out his hand.

"How," he said. "Good-looking Indian. Drive heap stick."

"Ugh!" said the puzzled savage. "How boy get away?"

"Leave stick there," said Cal. "Pull off arm. Put hand on again. Cut off foot. Put on again. Want coffee."

He explained more fully, by signs, that he had taken himself to pieces to get out of his wooden fetters, and had put himself together again to come and eat his breakfast.

Almost all Indians have a vein of satirical fun in them, and Cal's explanation was thoroughly appreciated by his hearers, excepting the wrinkled-faced warrior who was made to look like a cheated watchman. Wah-wah-o-be laughed aloud, and a deep, sonorous voice behind them joined her in what was half-way between a chuckle and a cough.

"Ugh!" it added. "Heap boy. Son of long paleface chief. How boy like stake out? Kah-go-mish!"

"Kah-go-mish is a great chief," said Cal. "Steal heap pony. Hear a great deal about him. Bad Indian."

He had touched, half bitterly, the right chord – the Apache leader's intense vanity about his fame. Wah-wah-o-be was also pleased to hear that the pale-faces talked about Kah-go-mish.

Before the chief could unbend for any more conversation, however, his duty required that he should investigate the affair of the forked stakes. They were a mystery even to him for a moment. He reprimanded the two guards severely for using them at all. They were needless. They had been carelessly put down. The braves who had done it were mere squaws, and did not know how to drive a stake. He was stooping over one of the fetters when he said that, and the truth flashed upon him. Cal had driven it down hard, and it was plain that no human ankle had ever been under that fork. The chief's derision of the unlucky guards broke out afresh, but he expressed great admiration for the skill and conduct of the young pale-face brave, the worthy son of the long, broad-shouldered chief of the Santa Lucia cowboys.

Wah-wah-o-be had no need to explain to the dog-soldiers that Cal was to be permitted to finish his breakfast in peace. They were decidedly inclined to favor a youngster who had performed a feat so remarkable, and whose courage was evidently equal to his cunning.

Other Indians and other squaws came and went, and boys and girls, although the larger part of the band was inclined to sleep a little late that morning.

Kah-go-mish came back from his inspection of the stakes, and he came with another part of his plan ready for action. He now felt pretty sure of getting back Ping and Tah-nu-nu without giving up too many horses, and he had decided upon a safe method for opening negotiations with the pale-faces. Nothing whatever could be done successfully as long as the blue-coats were in the way. He had dealt with army officers before, and their methods had been unpleasant. They had always persisted in speaking of captured horses as stolen property, and they were in a sort of league with the Mexicans as to such matters. His first business was to get beyond their reach, after letting them know that he held a hostage for their present good behavior. He ate his breakfast while he was thinking over the matter, and then he summoned one of his most cunning warriors and told him to bring his swiftest horse and a cactus-leaf.

Cal's heart jumped for joy when he found that he was to write to his father, even with such materials. He took the leaf and he used his knife for a pen. He saw the Apache messenger spring upon his horse and ride away, and it seemed to him that one of the heaviest parts of his burden had been taken off.

Kah-go-mish took pains to explain to his prisoner that if he should run away to the northward he would die of thirst in the desert, and if to the southward, he would only lose himself among forests and mountains.

"Stake him out again?" said Cal. "Pull up stakes and come for coffee."

Once more the grim Apache smiled not unkindly, and there was less danger of any sort of handcuffs or shackles.

As soon as the entire band had eaten its morning meal, Cal had something worth looking at. The packs taken from the Mexican army mules had not been searched, up to that hour, except for present supplies. It was now needful to ascertain exactly what they contained, and they were all brought out and laid upon the ground in order. It was speedily evident that a company of Mexican cavalry, with a reinforcement of mounted militia, required few luxuries, but meant to have enough of such as it wanted.

CAL TOOK THE LEAF, AND USED HIS KNIFE FOR A PEN.

Corn-meal for tortillas, or Mexican cakes, was plentiful, and the Apache squaws knew what to do with it. So was bacon. There was an abundance of coffee and a fair supply of sugar. There were several small bales of tobacco in the leaf, for cigaritas, and some in manufactured shape. There were whole mule-loads of blankets, for possible use in mountain camps. There was ammunition, as if Colonel Romero had expected much fighting. Miscellaneous plunder filled out the list, and the band of the great Kah-go-mish considered itself very rich indeed.

Chapter XXIX.

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE FIRE?